The long view is alive and well

One of the benefits of living in the Bay Area (yes there are many) is that there are always great lectures going on. Unfortunately that also means you have to miss some. Fortunately bloggers like Scott Rosenberg can keep you up to date on what you missed.

I was driving back from a protocol geek summit in San Diego last Friday so I couldn’t make it to Brian Eno’s talk on the Long Now. Looking at this post from Scott it seems like I wouldn’t have gotten in, but I would have gotten to meet Danny Hillis who was working as an usher. If that’s not a sign this is something worth thinking about I don’t know what is.

It’s nice to see so many people in an area defined by the new new thing are so interested in taking a long term view. “Eno explained the Long Now Foundation’s aim of expanding our frame of reference in thinking about the future: What if we were thinking not just about tomorrow or next year or even ‘the rest of my life,’ but about the next 10,000 years?”

Scott’s post has more details on what the Long Now is about and references to more material in addition to some great observations on the juxtoposition of the overflow crowd with an exhibit of Annie Leibovitz’s “homages to ephemeral celebrity”.